Retail is a seriously competitive game. Even the giants need to make use of every possible marketing advantage and every possible route to a sale. Nowadays, that includes mobile e-commerce, which is, by some distance, the platform that is seeing the fastest growth in sales and revenue.

As with all cutting-edge technologies, however, it is the big boys that have been making the most of this new retail territory, which is a shame, given the struggles many small businesses are having to cope with.

But, finally, help appears to be at hand. Dashsell, a company that has thus far concentrated on providing a simple way to list items for sale online, has now launched Shops — a beta, self-service, mobile store app builder. With plans starting from free, and with web, iOS and Android versions available, it looks ideal for the small retailer. But is this the killer platform that will open a new frontier? Or is it just another cookie-cutter app studio?

Passwords dominate our lives these days; they are part and parcel of spending time online. There are now so many applications, service, devices and websites that require us to log into our secure account using a password that the sheer number of passphrases we have to remember has spiralled completely out of control.

For the best level of security it’s advisable to use a completely different password for each website and service — just off the top of my head I can think of 20 websites that I need to log into (there are probably at least double if I were to sit down and list everything properly); how the heck am I supposed to remember 20 completely unique passwords, each of which comprises a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Oh, and don’t forget… you’re meant to change these passwords every few weeks!

Some people say that social media will be dead in a few years. Others say its already revolutionized how we communicate and present ourselves to the world. I agree with the latter. Compared to a few short years ago the entire web has become much more integrated with Facebook and Twitter. With Google Glass getting ready to bolster Google+, things are about to heat up.

For a business that means one thing – they must improve their social media standings right away. Falcon claims to be the right tool for the job. A high-end social media manger application with big clients such as Swarovski and Carlsberg making use of their software we were very interested. The Copenhagen based start-up has just risen €6 million in Series A funding with the aim of “driving international expansion”.

Over the last few years apps have overtaken our phones and now the web — at least in a more organized way (e.g. the Chrome Web Store). While this movement has been fantastic and allowed us to do more than ever, it’s also made it easy to overload ourselves with an unmanageable number of apps.

Mobile devices and desktops aside, I am still overwhelmed at times with the number of web apps I use, have access to and test each and every day. The web front didn’t use to be this way for me and was quite manageable. Perhaps I’m in this situation now because I work with so many more web apps for this site, or perhaps the growth and advancement of the web has opened up many more web app possibilities.

What are your thoughts? Are you overloaded with web apps on a regular basis or do you just ignore the growing multitudes? If you ignore them, how do you stay on the edge of new and exciting apps?

Personally, I am consistently overloaded with not just web apps but mobile and even desktop apps. However, I generally thrive off the constant stream of fresh, new apps to try, which always push the envelope of what’s possible to greater lengths. At times though, I certainly need a break and to stabilize my ever changing app line-up. How about you?

Feedback is a vital part of the design process, though getting it in an interactive and constructive manner to put to use in the next revision can be a tricky process. But, for a web designer, asking for feedback in most cases can become tedious as you can’t do everything from within a PDF attached to an email.

There’re plenty of web apps which can actually make the task of gathering feedback for web and other design works simpler and swifter. Bounce is a web app focused on collecting and sharing comments on web apps and websites. Let’s take a look.

With the multitude of web applications available today, it can be difficult choosing, let alone finding, an application that fits your needs and wants. There are so many fantastic apps available, many of which are bound to be beneficial for you and/or your business.

From mind mapping, design and development to collaboration, project tracking and accounting; this roundup of 101 fantastic web apps for startups and businesses are sure to reduce operating costs and increase both productivity and efficiency.

With as much technology news as there is, most of us are bound to miss lots of great information. While it would be impossible to cover everything that happens in a week, we would like to bring you a roundup of web app news you may have missed this week.